At The Red Sea

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a  strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. (Exodus 14:21-22)

          Now, this is the sort of provision I want to see! Totally! Well, except the part about the Egyptian army thundering across the desert after me. Except, in other words, for the crisis or need that precipitates the provision. “Be amazing, God! But don’t let me feel the lack or the danger for more than a few minutes.”

          In order to fully appreciate this passage, it’s necessary to back up a little. According to some scholars, Moses had gone to Egypt to deliver God’s “Let My people go” message as long as three years before the events in today’s passage. Ten plagues had swept through Egypt, and finally, the Israelites are given their travelling papers. Instead of taking the most direct route, they meandered. One night, they see the torches of the Pharaoh’s army. The Red Sea is in front of them, and their enemy behind them.

          Effective, oh yes, quite effective. Great effects. But efficiency seems to have been deliberately thrown out the window. It would have been so much easier if God had struck the pharaoh with lightning the first time the pharaoh didn’t cooperate, and then said from heaven, “Anyone else want to argue with me?” And when no one volunteered, they could have taken the direct route, the Promised Land express route. But, no…

          We face similar, but less dramatic situations. There are times when we’d like to sit down with God and explain a few things. It would be so much easier if God would just ___________. Most people today would probably fill in that blank with “make COVID-19 go away.”

          Part of the problem is that we have a very simplistic view of what’s going on. If you read a novel, or better yet, write one, one of the things you discover is that a good story has more than one thing going on. The story may all be told from the point of view of person A, but persons B, C, L, Q, and W all have a role to play, and in at least a couple of cases, those roles wind in and out of person A’s life. They have their own story line and an author has to weave them in and out of person A’s storyline.

          Authors are poor, petty gods. They do in miniature and in imagination what God does for real. In today’s passage, He was weaving together millions of stories. His overall purpose seems to have been to free Israel and to punish Egypt, but within that there were the stories of Moses and Aaron and the individual Jews and others who were following them, and of the billions  of people who, hundreds of generations later, would exist because of what happened, or be influenced by what happened. It’s never as simple as “if God would just _______.”

          I don’t know all of what God’s doing in our lives through this pandemic, but He’s not likely to waste it in our lives. Among the possibilities are that He’s teaching us to trust and love Him, He’s teaching us to love one another, He’s building our spiritual strength, He’s breaking our chains, and He’s preparing us to make a difference in other people’s lives. And all those things are good. He's accomplishing His purpose, even if he's taking you in directions that make no sense to you.